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Regular people don’t walk on water. Not even exceptional people cascade over choppy waters.

Jesus did.

And that declaration gave 20th century liberals a headache. In searching for the “historical Jesus” (read non-supernatural Jesus) they could not grasp how the laws of nature could be broken by a man walking on water.

So they did what every smarter-than-the-text theologian does, they explained it away. Perhaps it was an optical illusion. Maybe it was actually a sandbar. Whatever solution you can concoct is more plausible than a man with a beard walking upon the sea instead of sinking underneath it. That is too astonishing of a claim.

In ancient days, books were a means to mastery and mastery came through memory. There were relatively few books and those books were mastered rather than skimmed. “The ancient and medieval way of reading was totally different from how we read today. One didn’t just memorize texts; one ruminated on them—chewed them up and regurgitated them like cud—and in the process, became intimate with them in a way that made them one’s own.” That sounds very much like what David did when he meditated on God’s Word both day and night.

Those who read did so in order to remember. This has important implications.

Leaving Christianity is one of the most serious issues facing the Church today. Right under our noses, an epidemic is confronting Christianity— the “disease” of unbelief spreading among our very own. The ironic fact is that there is a great assembly of people in our churches who are somewhere in the process of leaving. No, I am not talking about them leaving one denomination, only to join another Christian group. I am not talking about abandoning some institutionalized notion of Christianity. I am not even talking about the explicit renunciation of their expressed beliefs. I am talking about those who are leaving Christ. (And this is coming from a Calvinist who does not believe that those who are truly elect will ever leave).